The sheet handling apparatus which handles sheets, such as negotiable securities, takes out those sheets one by one from a bundle of multiple sheets, for example, one thousand sheets using a sheet take-out device, sends out the sheets to the conveyance route and conveys the sheets at a predetermined pitch. Then the sheet handling apparatus discriminates kinds of conveyed sheets, for example the classification of negotiable securities and quality state, for example discrimination of genuine sheet, mutilated sheet, rejectable sheet, etc., are discriminated with a discriminating device, and appoints destination for every classification and for every quality.
Based on the discrimination result of sheets, the conveyance control part makes the sheets to be conveyed to their appointed destinations by controlling sorting gates arranged along the conveyance route. The conveyed sheets are stacked in the stacking devices provided to the terminations of individual branch conveyance routes. An impeller type stacking device is used for the stacking device as a measure of stacking, while absorbing the bearer rate of the sheets conveyed at high speed.
The stacking device stacks those sheets taken in from the conveyance route in a temporary storage. When an amount of the stacked sheets reaches predetermined number of sheets, for example, one hundred sheets, they are tied up in a one hundred sheets bundle with a banding band, such as a wrapper band.
Multiple sheets reside simultaneously on the conveyance route, and they are conveyed at a high speed. A destination information set up by the discrimination result obtained by the above-described discriminating device for every sheet is transmitted to a control part, by being continuously shifted during the conveyance of the sheets. That is, in each passing a sensor or a so-called shift-sensor arranged along a conveyance route, the destination information as attributes of the sheets is also transmitted to the control part in accompanying the conveyance of the sheets. As a result, when a sheet is detected by sensor, the destination information which is the attribute of sheets is discriminated. The sheet is then conveyed to the above-described stacking device based on the destination information in every time that the sorting gate is driven.
As is clear from the above description, the sheets are stacked in a last stacking device, by at least the destination information of the sheet is transmitted in the form of shift processing. As described above, since multiple sheets are conveyed along the conveyance route at a high speed and thus the control of the destination information of the sheets is required immediacy, the destination information of the sheets has been conventionally controlled by a single CPU. In order to fill the demand of immediacy, a technique to control only a required minimum control item in the form of shift processing has been used.
On the other hand, in order to respond to diversification of the kind of sheets to be handled, a necessity of executing the shift processing control operation by distributing to multiple CPUs has arisen, and then a measure for the distributing execution has been also been examined. However, only the destination information has been conventionally subjected for the shift processing control operation. Meanwhile, as disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 6-162324, there is known a money receiving and disbursing apparatus which memorizes a quantity of some denomination bills stacked in some bill storage on a conveyance route.
In the prior art apparatus, a sorting gate arranged on an upstream in the conveyance direction of the stacking devices are sorted with destination information using a shift style manner. Thereby, the apparatus does not require bill denomination information of each sheet (money). Therefore, even if a malfunction that a sheet discriminated as a first classification is stacked in a stacking device to stack a second classification, while another sheet discriminated as the second classification is stacked in the stacking device to stack the first classification (so-called “interfusion of each other”) has occurred, there is a problem that the malfunction is overlooked.
Furthermore, since the sensing operations of the sensors requires immediacy, it has been configured that the sensing operations of the sensors has been controlled in the form of shift processing with a single CPU. However, in accompanying a growing of the sheet handling apparatus in size, a number of sensors also increase. As a result, the single CPU has failed to complete controls over multiple sensors. Therefore, the shift processing control operation has become to be executed by distributing with multiple CPUs.
Conventionally, in case of executing the shift processing control operation with multiple CPUs, only the information of the last destination of the sheets was made as an attribute of the sheets. Therefore, the information of the stacking device that is capable of controlling and then storing the sheets residing on the conveyance route is only a number of sheets. Therefore, even if disagreement occurred between a number of sheets fed into the apparatus (number of fed sheets) and a number of sheets stacked in the stacking device (number of stacked sheets), there was a problem that look-back reviews of the number of stacked sheets for each classification could not executed.
Furthermore, since the stacking device can not execute controlling and then storing the information regarding classification of the sheets (bills), it was impossible to know the classification of frequently handled bills at a maintenance service. Therefore, there was a problem that an optimal maintenance service corresponding to the frequently handled classification could not be executed.
Furthermore, since a final machine inspection of the number of sheets upon termination of the sheet handling operation is made with only the number of stacked sheets, classification information can not be utilized for the inspection of the number of sheets.
Meanwhile, since the money processor disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 6-162324 fails to have a function of processing the classification information in the form of shift operation, the processor has a drawback that it is impossible to be adapted for a large equipment which comprises multiple conveyance routes.